This will be a fully explained Graves guide with the best builds, runes & how to play him in League of Legends Season 11!
Since it’s preseason time, we will make changes according to the patch, so you will have updated guides all the time!
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Graves – Runes & Summoner Spells
These are the runes you typically run on Graves. Phase Rush is a must, the Movement Speed bonus is extremely useful especially during ganks, since Graves only has the W as crowd control to slow down enemies.
Nimbus Cloak & Waterwalking are run for the same exact reason, it increases his MS while also giving him better skirmishing potential.
Absolute Focus, on the other hand, speeds up his clearing time due to Graves’ innate capability of kiting the jungle camps without losing health.
As for the 2nd tree, you always run Precision. Triumph’s allow him to accelerate his build with the extra gold with the bonus of restoring HP, while the attack speed from Legend: Alacrity will lower his reload time.
While attack speed & adaptive force are the constant runes, the last one is really up to you. Typically you can run Magic Resist since Graves E already grants armor, but if you’re against AD-heavy junglers or team compositions, you can keep the Armor instead.
Since you will most likely play jungle as Graves, you will run Flash+Smite. As for which Smite you want to pick up, it’s usually recommended to go for the Red Smite as it gives better skirmishing power compared to Blue Smite.
Graves Build & Skill Order
The build for Graves is very straightforward. Eclipse is the best Mythic item since it gives everything he needs: Attack damage, Lethality, Omnivamp plus the Shield & MS when it procs.
As for legendary items, you usually want to rush The Collector or Youmuu’s Ghostblade. Their spike is very strong & all the stats they grant are very effective.
Bloodthirster is a strong 3rd or 4th item: more healing means more durability for the gunslinger & with the item changes in preseason it now gives also 20% crit chance.
For Defensive Items, you build according to what team composition you’re against. All the items listed are very effective: it’s a matter of what you want to prioritize between attack damage/armor/magic resist.
 End of the Line | 2 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 9 | |||||||||||||
 Smoke Screen | 3 | 13 | 15 | 17 | 18 | |||||||||||||
 Quickdraw | 1 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | |||||||||||||
 Collateral Damage | 6 | 11 | 16 |
As for the max order, you usually start with E or Q. It’s better to start with E since it gives armor, allowing you to receive less damage from jungle camps. You want to max Q, then E, then W last. Remember to max the Ultimate whenever you can: it’s a really powerful AoE ability.
During Early Game
In the early game, you want to get some kills & start snowballing your lead as Graves. You have an extremely strong clearing, allowing you to get to lv 3 faster than most junglers. You will want to focus on getting both the scuttle crabs since they give insane exp & gold. Getting both means being ahead of 1 level of the enemy jungler for almost the whole early game.
You want to look for ganking opportunities by throwing the W-Smoke Screen onto the enemies so they are slowed & without vision, allowing your teammates to follow up & pick up some kills. You can also invade the opponent jungler if you’re stronger than him but always be aware for the enemy laners in case they are coming for aid.
Mid-Late Game
Just like most junglers, you should focus on picking up dragon & objectives to close out the game quickly. While Graves remains strong throughout the whole game, it might become difficult to fight as him if he’s shutdown or can’t succesfully dish out damage. Avoid fighting between the minions waves & look for fights around walls or when enemies are clustered together. Your goal is to take down the enemy carries as soon as the fight starts, so make sure to find those openings in order to win the team fights!
Conclusions
Graves is a very unorthodox jungler as his mechanics are all revolved around his auto attacks & ability usage. While he’s not that extremely hard, it requires almost perfect execution of all the combos to be successful. If you manage to get ahead & snowball, Graves can become a 1v9 monster who can bi-shot almost everyone!
Hope you enjoyed our guide & make sure to check out our future guides on other champions!
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